Manager fired, woman charged after movie theater altercation goes viral

NORTH VERSAILLES, Pa. — A movie theater manager has been fired after an altercation with a woman and several teenagers that was caught on cell phone camera video went viral.

The incident happened at the Phoenix Theater in North Versailles last month.

According to police paperwork, a group of teenagers had been thrown out of the theater and went back inside. That's when police got involved and escorted them out of the building.

Melanie Carter started recording the incident with her cell phone -- more than 1 million people have seen the approximately 80-second video -- and tells Officer Christopher Kelley she was looking out for the girls.

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The video shows the exchange of words and at one point the theater manager is heard calling the girls "animals."

Kelley tells Carter she needs to leave the property but the arguing continues, as she says her children are still inside the theater.

Video then shows Carter being handcuffed and saying, "Get off of me ... what are you doing?!"

In the complaint, Kelley wrote, "She was struggling with me and refused to put her hands behind her back, laying on them and pulling them away from me."

People who have seen the video wonder whether Kelley went too far.

"It was a lot of precautionary measures that he could've took to avoid all that, but he chose the route he did," said Drew White.

While it's unclear what happened immediately before and after the video, Heather Soto of Elizabeth said it shouldn't have ended the way it did.

"She wasn't doing anything and what they did to her was wrong," she said.

The theater has fired the manager seen in the video, saying, "We determined that the manager's conduct does not reflect our values, his training, or our policies. This is certainly not the way we treat people."

Carter is facing four misdemeanors including failure to disperse and resisting arrest.

Cox Media Group